Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A Pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Codefendants are the ultimate example of being more than the sum of its parts. The trio is made up of well-established artists: rapper Ceschi Ramos, Get Dead‘s Sam King and NOFX‘s Fat Mike came together and created some of the best work of any of their already legendary careers, the genre-defiant The Is Crime Wave. I’ve barely had a moment to stop swooning over how excellent the record is when Ramos decided to take the stand and join us in our latest Roll of the Dice interview.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the release of This Is Crime Wave. What can you tell us about how you got together and what the writing and recording processes looked like for
the record?
Sam discovered my solo music via his close friends and graffiti crew mates. Some of them had supported me and my label Fake Four when I went to prison back in 2013. One of Sam’s childhood friends named Mark Heredia even did tattoos to raise money for me and my label when I went away. In 2018 he saw me perform at Gilman St in Berkeley. That night he sent a video of me playing a folk song called “Say Something” over to Erin at Fat Wreck and she said, “absolutely not!” Ha-ha. By 2020 Sam had shouted me out on a podcast and some mutual fans of ours told me about it. I listened to Get Dead “Dancing With A Curse” and loved it. Shortly after I reached out and we started chatting on the phone regularly. At one point Sam said, “come to LA… lets record” and he sent me a rough acoustic demo of “Abscessed”. I wrote my lyrics on the flight over and we set up a session with Baz The Frenchman. Everything happened naturally from there, we were just coming out of lockdown era and flowing with musical ideas and words.
You guys have all been at this for quite a bit now, what about the chemistry of Codefendants separates this project from your previous work?
This is the most collaborative project any of us have ever been a part of. All three of us have been sole songwriters in our main projects over many years. In this band there are moments when we write songs bar for bar together. There are moments when Sam and I will bring a musical idea to the table and Mike reworks, adds parts. It’s just three songwriters coming with any style, any idea and taking it from there.
Codefendants is indisputably a politically charged band. In this age of social media, members of the Q-Tang Klan have been emboldened to aggressively spew their ignorance with arrogance and anonymity, spreading misinformation at every turn. Where would you direct our readers to stay informed without having to wade through the bullshit from the Buzzcucks and MAGAdeath of the world?
I’d argue that existence within this system is inherently political. Hiding from politics is not an actual option. Some may try – but we live within the belly of a beast. The words we choose are important, they hold weight, no matter how simple or complex. In an era of potent and extremely effective propaganda (Q / MAGA being great examples of that) I think the best advice I keep repeating is to think critically – consider context, purpose, sources. We are still in the early stages of social media – and millions of impressionable (even if intelligent) people take things at face value without recognizing how they’ve become tools of spreading potentially dangerous disinformation. Millions bamboozled daily. It’s easy to find content (whether an article or MEME) to represent and magnify whatever point of view a person may have – and it’s easy to be manipulated by something as simple as an image with a bit of text. These are not new techniques – they have been tools used to push dominant ideologies for centuries. Personally – I seek information sources that aren’t overtly tied to party or corporate lines. Though I fully understand that all journalism is attached to some kind of bias, I look at Democracy Now as a trusted news source, I appreciate the work CrimeThinc does – I think much of that can be really helpful for curious youth, Jacobin as well, there are podcasts out there such as On The Media, Abby Martin has done a lot of good work, I appreciate Scott Crow’s work over the years a lot. There are many excellent Zines floating around as well.
When it came to watching the birth of ideological warfare / propaganda campaign that was Q – I listened to Q-Anon-Anonymous podcast regularly. Well researched information is all out there. But I ALWAYS recommend maintaining perspective and a critical eye while ingesting information. Ignorance is not necessarily stupidity; it’s simply not knowing or understanding something – accepting information at face value leads to mass manipulation.
What’s the state of the scene from your point of view? We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked. Beyond the lyrics, what impact, if any, does the current cultural and political landscape have on the band?
I feel like most scenes have splintered into micro scenes…in some ways that’s very interesting – there are opportunities for every type of artist – I could have comfortably maintained a lifelong “working class” DIY music job in my specific micro scene that I helped build , it’s safe and easier to not branch out and be critiqued and stared at by outsiders.
Codefendants is another animal though – it’s hopefully becoming a pop project – many new eyes, many people who do not agree with us will see us hit big stages – it’s not comfortable at all but if we’re able to infiltrate the industry it can also shift thinking, influence listeners in different ways. There is a lot of space for growth.
This band is also definitely a product of the pandemic era, all of us would have been touring relentlessly if it weren’t for pandemic, instead we had time to make this whole new project and form lifelong friendships and shift our entire lives. That would have never happened otherwise. Pandemic isolation and some of the losses we faced during these past years also made me extremely nostalgic and I believe This Is Crime Wave references a lot of childhood / teen influences in direct ways because of that.
The term supergroup gets thrown about quite a bit, and Codefendants is certainly a band whose pedigree has earned the title, but how, if at all, does the pressure of your past work play into the songwriting? How do you cope with the high bar you’ve set for yourselves in the eyes of the audience?
Guess I’m speaking for all of us when I say that we think it’s strange to hear the term “supergroup”. I recall some of these terrible experiments in rock and some rare successes. Oftentimes they feel like money grabs put together by labels. Codefendants couldn’t be further from that. We are homies who now live together and make shit all the time. We happen to be lifelong musicians, and all still love doing that. We are taking risks doing this project, doing something wildly unexpected and ready to experience criticism and bullshit that comes with it. I think the only real pressure that comes from our past is maintaining quality. We have all put out albums we are deeply proud of with our other projects – we want to keep a level of consistency with Codefendants that never feels like an afterthought or throw away.
You’ve all been at this all for a while, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?
Ah…I guess we all have missed opportunities…but, on some chaos theory shit, I firmly believe that those things didn’t happen because they weren’t supposed to.
Any little shift could have led to different outcomes for Sam, Mike and I, this project feels like the right time and place for all of us. There’s an energy about it that is undeniably special.
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should know about?
Biased answer:
Zeta, N8NOFACE, Apes of the State, Factor Chandelier, Moodie Black, B L A C K I E, Myles Bullen, Chris Conde, Gregory Pepper and His Problems, Squalloscope, Virtual Bird, AJ Suede, Doomscroll, Teenage Halloween, Homeless Gospel Choir, Oscar Goldman, Midwife
Shit…that list can go on and on
Now that the world has its hands on the record, what’s next for the members of Codefendants?
Going hard and sharing this music live – but we also have thirteen new demos to work on when we’re done.
Thank you again for your time! Before we end things here, was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Stay up to date with us at @Codefendants_Legal_Fund
Thanks !
Ceschi
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
